Day 27 of the Campaign

Posted by Elizabeth May974sc on August 30, 2015

Today, as ferocious winds tore across Vancouver Island and the lower mainland, and huge downpours made a mockery of the months long drought, I thought of the devastation of Katrina. The lessons from Katrina can inform how we prepare for extreme weather. New Orleans needed stronger levees to withstand that hurricane, but it can really teach us how necessary a social safety net is, along with integrated neighbourhoods, less inequality, and more redundancies for energy and food supply. Resiliency should be the goal of every city and province, especially in light of the extreme weather that we can expect with the current level of climate change.

I find it hard to understand why other parties aren’t addressing the challenges relating to climate change, be it resilience, or renewable energy, or energy security. It’s clear, though, that we will have to recuperate, adapt and thrive ̶ and New Orleans offers lessons in that too.